Respawn
by LadyLordship
Summary: A man with no name finds himself in the middle of a forest with no recollection of anything prior to him being there. The only evidence of humanity he has are wild dreams, and a mysterious figure that watches over him. Will he find answers?


Respawn

I can't remember much from before I moved here. In fact, I can barely remember anything at all. As far as I know, I've been living in the same house for a while now. I don't know where I moved from, or how I got here, I just know that when I wandered into the woods one day, it felt like a fresh start. From what, I have no idea. I built my simple abode from the wood of a very strong oak tree. There was nothing special or symbolic about it, but it was certainly the biggest tree I had ever seen before; it was about four or five times my size.

I must have been some kind of carpenter or woodworker at some point, because I knew how to make an axe from just a couple of sticks and some hunck of rock. Maybe I built things for people before The Awakening, as I've taken to calling my stumble into the woods that day. Which reminds me, I haven't seen any other people since I've lived here. I wonder if anyone else will ever show up; it's been days.

My time in these woods has shown me things I've never seen before. Mutations that could have only been formed by some kind of terrible accident. Thankfully, many of these abominations have left me alone thus far, since most of them only come out after dark. However, sometimes sleeping is more tiring than being awake. Visions. Terrible, awful visions sometimes make me scream in the middle of the night. I see people, people I seem to know in the dream but in real life I know I've never seen them before. I see them with me, and we're all enjoying ourselves. But usually, towards the end of the scene, they turn into those abominations of the night and begin to rip me apart. Well, some of them at least. A few of them stand off to the side, and they've become sickly looking and very, very thin. Their bones almost seem to come out of their bodies. They stand further away than the ones tearing at my flesh, who also look rather unwell.

The thin ones shoot at me; sharp, pointed arrows dig into my flesh, making me wish it were over already. Then one comes to my rescue. It only takes one to "save" me from my suffering. His skin, pockmarked and rough-looking, always catches my attention. He calmly walks over to where I stand, and whispers something in a foreign tongue.

In an instant, it's all over.

I wake up feeling exhausted, and I go out to see if my small farm has grown anything. Nothing yet, just a few struggling little sprouts. There's not much water where I live; I had to travel a long ways to get just a little bit of water to my humble abode. After I check my crops I go to see Regina, my trusty chicken. She doesn't do much, lays an egg every now and again, but she's mostly there to keep me company. It was strange to find her all by herself. Other chickens I've seen live in small groups, but she was the only one I could find living around my area. Maybe we stumbled into these woods at the same time, and it's the universe telling me we're meant to be with each other. Or maybe I'm just crazy.

Either way, a day doesn't go by that I don't see Regina. She keeps me sane.

During my conversation with Regina about how the weather is and my daily activities, I hear a strange noise. It was almost like a gulping sound, or like a stomach growling. I turn around to see what was causing the commotion, but there was nothing there. I felt my stomach, and I was a bit peckish. I ate a loaf of bread and went on with my day.

I went into the small mine by my house to get a bit of coal, since I was running low. I heard the sound again.

_ It can't be me_, I thought to myself, _I just ate._

I decide to search for the source of the sound, but I soon changed my course when I heard the tell-tale slurping sound of a Spider. Knowing that I could only dream of beating one in a fight with no armor and a stone sword, I turned around and made haste back to my home. It was almost dark, anyway.

As I got ready to get into bed, I shuddered at the thought of what might haunt me in tonight's episode. As much as it frightened me to face it, I got into bed, and went to sleep.

It wasn't a nightmare. It was a civilization.

Houses, much nicer than mine, littered the plains. Large farms, filled to the brim with wheat and other foodstuffs, tested my stomach and tempted my mind. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw what looked to be a person.

Just then, the dream ended.

_ I have to go there. That's where I'll find answers._

I packed up what little things I owned, and said goodbye to Regina, as much as it pained me to do so. I knew she would be much happier roaming around in the wild, and I wouldn't be able to take her with me unless I...you know...slaughtered her. So I let her out of her enclosure, and set off towards where I'm pretty sure the plains are.

It's definitely not easy being on the road. My limited supply of food made it difficult to go very far without nearly starving to death. Night fell upon me much quicker than I expected, and I began to panic. I could see the monsters beginning to come out, and I became very frightened. I quickly dug a hole, sealed the top, and set up my bed. Not the nicest place to hunker down, but there was no time to build anything with all those creatures roaming around.

I fell asleep unusually fast, like someone had yanked me into it. The vision began.

There were men everywhere. Thousands of them, littered across a destroyed plain. They all looked like me. A few of them I knew, but the rest were strangers to my dreaming mind. A large, whirring machine flew above our heads, shooting small, metallic rocks at us. Some of the men went down, and stayed there. Some of them, who hadn't been shot by the rocks, but instead punctured by thin, glass containers filled with liquid, also went down. But they stood back up. They weren't the same. Most changed immediately, into the mutations that ripped me open in previous dreams. They came at us, moaning and groaning as if they were in pain, but couldn't communicate it. I ran, and ran into the pock-marked creature.

And then I woke up.

I dug myself out of my little hovel, and continued on my quest. After many hours, almost twilight by then, I saw it. It was so beautiful, I wanted to cry. At least seven houses and ten people in the middle of the grass. I ran up to see them, and they looked very different than I do, but they all looked the same.

I tried to communicate with one of them, but to my dismay, we spoke different languages. Actually, they didn't speak at all. They seemed to communicate with their bodies, and roamed aimlessly around their tiny village until night came and they all rushed into houses. I picked the biggest one for myself, and set up camp. Nothing could ruin this day.

I woke up feeling better than I ever have, and went outside to explore my surroundings a bit more. I harvested whatever wheat was ready, and ate until I was stuffed. When I went around my house to get the lay of the land, I heard the sound again.

That awful, sickening sound that seemed to come from nowhere sent a shudder down my whole body. I suddenly felt...empty. In desperate search for the source, I found nothing but purple dust on the ground, but it disintegrated before long.

What I did next made me wish I was never born.

As I turned around to head back home, I saw someone. He was tall, and he just stood there. In an instant he was gone, but his piercing eyes and menacing figure sent me hightailing it back to the village. I didn't know what to make of it, I had never seen something so chillingly horrifying in my entire life. There was no way I could sleep now.

But night got the best of me, and I reluctantly went under my covers to try to get a good night's rest.

Of course, that didn't happen.

There was a man, standing in a corner of what appeared to be a cement room. He didn't move, and was barely visible in the low light. Another man in a long, white coat came in and said something to him, but I don't remember what it was. He walked up to the man in the corner and forcefully pulled him out of the corner and strapped him onto a large metal table. I could see the man now, he was one of the thin ones from my dream. The man in the coat took out a piece of glass with a white liquid in it, and jabbed it into the thin one's arm. He let out a short scream, but it was weak, and you could see his body struggling to keep alive his withered, failing body. It almost seemed like he was getting even thinner now.

I woke up, like I always do, and went out to find a mine. I knew if I was going to live in this kind of world, I would need to defend myself more than I was doing. I found a large chunk of iron ore, and went back home to smelt some armor to protect myself. Days go by faster while you're mining, so it was soon time for bed.

It was the thin man again. He looked...different. If possible, he was even thinner. But...he had very little skin left. Like it had all just fallen off. His bloodied bones shook and rattled with each movement he made. His eyes, gaping sockets with beady little eyes stared right through me. When the man in the coat came in, the thin man didn't move, just stood there. As if he would fall apart if he tried to move too much. The man in the coat approached him, looked right into his little eyes, and said, "How are feeling today, Daniel? Have you been practicing your exercises like I told you to?" Daniel gave a small, subtle nod and continued to stare straight ahead, as if looking past the man in the coat.

"Alright then," the man said, "let's see."

Daniel slowly got up and picked up a bow and arrow. As he drew the bow, he looked to be in immense pain, as if every second he strained himself shattered his exposed bones and stretched his skin to its limit. He fired the arrow, and it hit dead center.

"Very good," the man said, "I'll come back tomorrow to see about enlisting you."

As the man left and darkness surrounded Daniel, light enveloped me as the sting of daylight breached my eyelids.

I left my house, but I felt different. I had no interest in being outside, nor any motivation to do anything that day. I felt empty inside, like someone had left a hole where my insides should be. I spent that day doing nothing, until the Tall Man, as I called him, became visible over the hillside. He was holding a lump of dirt, and evaporated himself a few yards away to put it down. He turned toward me, and my heart sank. It felt even worse with the emptiness I was feeling. I don't think he saw me through the window, because he evaporated again too far away for me to see him. Relief swamped over me, and I hardly realized it was the middle of the night.

The creatures had already made themselves abundant in the streets of the village, and I could see the skeletal figures lurking around the area. I thought of Daniel, with his painful movements and his deteriorating body, and I wondered why he had become that way. Perhaps it had something to do with the fluid the man injected into him. Either way, I felt tired and decided to go to bed.

This vision was very strange. I was in it, and so were people I recognized from the battlefield. They all looked exactly like me, but somehow I knew who was who. It was nighttime, and there were a few figures prowling the area. I spied that one was a Skeleton, and to my dismay, it spied me too. An arrow whizzed past my head, just barely missing me. But my comrade behind me, whose name I instinctively knew was Gavin, was hit in the shoulder. We all made a run for it, and got Gavin to safety in a small cave. We pulled the arrow out, but it was one of the glass shards, with a few drops of a yellowish liquid still inside. Much of the fluid had already embedded itself into Gavin, and his skin began to take on a greenish hue. We were scared. We didn't know what was going on. Gavin's hyperventilation came to an abrupt halt, and one of the men, Miguel apparently, tried to give him CPR. After a few minutes of failed resuscitation, Gavin's body ran cold, but the strange greenness of his skin still remained. After a few minutes of silence and mourning, Gavin's eyes slowly opened, but they were glossy and lifeless. Looking past our comrade's obvious problem, Miguel leapt on him in embrace, only to become trapped in Gavin's tight grip as he ripped him to shreds and chewed on his limbs. The rest of us, mortified and baffled, ran in terror from our cannibalistic teammate. We had no idea what to think. I feel like there was an outside force that was causing this chaos and the mutations. But the dreams are unclear in what their purpose is.

Morning came, as it always does. I spent the day on my rooftop, pondering the dreams I'd been having for the past couple weeks. What could they mean? Are these memories, or just lucid dreams? Why can't I remember anything, and why are there no people left except for the mute wanderers I share a village with? I feel my thoughts getting stranger, darker. I wish I had Regina here with me. She would know what to do, she always did. The warm afternoon sun lulled me into a nap, and I had a beautiful daydream where I was with Regina, and we were sitting together on the rooftop, just talking. Not about the dreams, or the Tall Man, or any of the dark things. Just talking about how our days have gone, the friends we've made, and the food we've eaten. After our talk I gave her a big hug, and the emotion of it snapped me out of my slumber.

Liquid was dripping down my face, but I didn't know what it was. I figured it must be raining, but when I tried to wipe it off my face, it was sticky. And red. Taken aback, I realized what I was holding, and I threw up. Regina's lifeless body, skinned and bleeding over the rooftop, had somehow made it into my dreaming embrace. I felt lightheaded, and I threw up some more. The shock of it all sent my vision into a spiral; trees and flowers all spinning into one blur, a meaningless fog of color manifested into my brain. I couldn't take it; I felt faint. I collapsed on the ground and fell unconscious. And yet, I can't shake the feeling that just before I slipped away, I saw the Tall Man, standing over me. His long, black body looming over me like the shadow of Death. And as much as I don't want it to be true, I could have sworn he said,

"You're welcome."

I didn't sleep for three days after that. After I regained consciousness, I held a proper burial service for Regina, and built her a small shrine. I stood on that rooftop day in and day out, waiting. Even I didn't know exactly what I was waiting for. The Tall Man? Part of me wanted to kill him, but the other part knew that if I tried, he might do the same to me as he did to Regina, or worse. Was I waiting for answers to all the madness? I still am. I always am. I still want to know what all these hallucinations mean, what my role in all the chaos was. Why were there so many people in these visions? What were those glass shards? I needed answers, and I knew the only way I was going to get them, was if I slept.

I looked forward to whatever dream my mind had to throw at me. I want answers, and I expect to get them. I just hope I'm not going to regret it.

The dream begins.

I'm not myself, I'm just some kind of overseer. I'm in a large room with many maps in it with three men. A large, burly man with a soldier's uniform, an average, handsome man in formal attire, and the man in the white lab coat who was with Daniel. The soldier was sitting in a large chair, while the lab coat and the suit were standing by a number of charts and graphs, diagrams and complicated symbols.

"General," the lab coat pressed in a nervous tone, "it's a very delicate process. The subjects just aren't quite ready to go on the front yet. We need more time to perfect their mutations."

"I don't care if their fighting skills aren't completely perfect," the general retaliated, "I need these freaks on the front lines to strike fear into the mind of that damned dragon! Those stupid clones you made aren't working well enough!"

"Yes, sir, but most of the mutations have no idea how to fight, and the rest are in so much pain they can hardly move."

"Well then, fix it! Can't you give them any sort of heavy painkiller and just send them out?"

"I suppose, but they could possibly die from the amount I would have to give them; I could lose all of my work in a matter of minutes! Not to mention the cost of the drugs...we'd be bankrupt before we fixed half the fleet."

"However," added the suit, "you forgot to mention that these particular monsters don't completely die. Their humanity and souls are lost, but the body remains functioning, and if trained hard enough, the lifeless corpses should continue to fight even after death."

"And how many kinds of these monsters do you have?" Inquired the general.

"We currently have two kinds. One for range fighting and one for battling at close range. We have about 2,000 of each kind."

"Send them all," ordered the general, "we're going to need them if we're ever going to defeat that damned dragon and his minions. Now if only we could coax him up to the surface..."

"Ah, sir?" interrupted the lab coat, "we have something else you might be interested in."

"Well, out with it then! If you think it will help destroy the enemy, don't waste another minute!"

"There's another subject that we've been toying with, but it's still unstable. It's rather indifferent to it's surroundings, that is, until it sees somebody."

"What does it do when it sees somebody?"

"It, um, well...explodes."

"...explodes?"

"Yes sir, and it's quite a handsome explosion at that. Their bodies are made out of 80% gunpowder, and they operate much like the kamikaze soldiers of Japan."

"Send them out."

"Sir?"

"I want all those beasts out on the battlefield by tomorrow morning, I won't stand another day having to fight off these End creatures only to lose everything."

"But sir, they aren't stable! They will attack anything, including our sol-"

"_Enough!_ I want them out there, stable or not! We'll see what those damned skinny nightmares have to say when these babies explode right in their faces!"

You can imagine my surprise when I woke up in the morning. After that last dream, everything around me looked...different. How long had it been since that meeting took place, if it ever took place at all? More importantly, _why could I see it?_ It became fairly obvious that their was some kind of conflict between humans and some kind of dragon, but I think I would have seen some evidence of that by now if it were true. Sure, it explains the walking corpses, but what about the villagers? And was I just a clone? A copy of some unnamed person created to fight in a war I can't even remember? And who did they pick fro test subjects of the mutagens? Have I been slaughtering my friends? My neighbors? My family, if I even had one?

There are too many questions, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life trying to answer them with dreams. I see my sword by the bed, and the thought crosses my mind. _Why not just give up? End it all? No more worrying, no more nightmares, just peace._

The Tall Man had been watching me this whole time, only I just now noticed him. His eerie composure and captivating stare drew me towards him. I don't know what I was thinking, but for some reason I knew I would find something if I went to him. I started towards him, almost like a sleepwalker, and he dissolved and reappeared every few seconds. I don't know how long I had been following his sickening call, but after what seemed like a second we reached a desert. A huge temple stood before me, and the Tall Man awaited my company inside. The interior was ancient looking, with colorful patterns on the floor and exterior walls. The Tall Man went to the center of the temple, and stood there. I approached him slowly, and waited for my answers.

And they came in abundance.

Battles, monsters, friends, hardships, I remembered it all. And more than that, I saw what others saw, heard what only the select few could hear. I became the center of the universe, the all-knowing power of everything and everyone. I knew everything there was to know about the past, the present, what became of me, how I came to be here, and why I couldn't remember anything. And when the Tall Man had finished in transferring this information to me, he disappeared, and left me alone in the temple.

It was nighttime when I left the temple, and there were about three times as many monsters than there are by the village. I retreated cautiously, using my newfound knowledge to stay in their blind spots and avoid conflict.

I got back to the village unscathed, and entered my house. I slept without the interruption of dreams, and awoke to a beautiful morning. But when I walked out the door, the Tall Man was waiting there for me, and he had a friend with him.

One of the pockmarked exploding creatures stood not ten feet in front of me, and I looked to the Tall Man in horror. His eyes turned red, and for the first time, his mouth, huge and gaping, was geared towards me in unmistakeable betrayal. I thought of him to be a helper, my giver of knowledge. However, my giver also turned out to be my reaper, for when I became immobilized by his hypnotic stare, the explosive creature calmly made its way toward me, whispered something in a foreign tongue, and it was over in an instant.

...

I can't remember much from when I moved here. In fact, I can't remember much at all.


End file.
